Thursday, September 3, 2009

Hasbrouck's Hopes Alive for NBA

There might be a second former MAAC player in the NBA this season.

Kenny Hasbrouck, the 6-foot-3 guard who graduated from Siena in May after winning the conference's Player of the Year award this past season, might be getting an invitation to the Miami Heat's training camp.

Hasbrouck was one of 14 players that participated in the NBA team's "Heat Academy" recently.

"We had 14 guys there," Chet Kammerer, the Heat's vice president for player personnel told the Albany Times Union. "There's one left standing, and it's him (Hasbrouck)."

Kammerer indicated it would be about 10 days before the Heat made a decision on whether or not to bring Hasbrouck to its full-squad training camp.

Here's a link to the story about Hasbrouck, written by Pete Iorizzo, that appeared in the Times Union on Thursday:

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=837899

If Hasbrouck does eventually make an NBA roster, he would become the first Siena player to do so. Probably the closest was Billy Harrell, a two-sport athlete who played basketball at Siena College from 1949-52 and was named Honorable Mention All-American at guard by the United Press.

Harrell, though, rejected offers to play for the Harlem Globetrotters and the NBA's Minneapolis Lakers, and ultimately played professional baseball, playing parts of four seasons in the major leagues.

The MAAC currently has one of its former players in the NBA, Rider graduate 6-11 center Jason Thompson, who will be entering his second season with the Sacramento Kings. He averaged 11.1 points and 7.4 rebounds as a rookie.

Hasbrouck went undrafted in this past June's NBA draft. Since 1992 only three MAAC players have been drafted by NBA teams. They have been Thompson, a first-round pick by the Kings in 2008; Jared Jordan of Marist, a second-round pick by the Los Angeles Clippers in 2007; and, Luis Flores of Manhattan, a second-round pick by the Houston Rockets in 2004.

Flores played 23 regular-season games in the 2004-05 season and has not appeared in an NBA game since. Jordan has not appeared in a regular-season NBA game.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Keep watching this space over the next few days. We'll provide a list of all MAAC players drafted by NBA teams.